Pike County commissioners take gas pipeline detour fight to D.C.

Pike County Commissioners are racing against a June 27 federal deadline in their two-year battle to prevent a seven-mile gas pipeline detour.

BETH BRELJE

Pike County Commissioners are racing against a June 27 federal deadline in their two-year battle to prevent a seven-mile gas pipeline detour.

Commissioners have drafted a letter protesting the detour to Dennis Reidenbach, National Park Service Northeast Regional Director, and Ken Salazar, U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the controversial Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company plan to deviate from its existing right of way.

Instead of going through one mile of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in New Jersey, Tennessee will build seven miles of pipeline in Pike County looping around the national park.

The company has property right-of-way documents from 1955 and the existing pipeline has been in place since 1956, a decade before the park existed.

During initial planning of the pipeline route in 2010, Park Superintendent John Donahue indicated to Tennessee that the National Park Service would likely strenuously oppose a second pipeline on the right of way where the current pipeline exists.

The company must have the pipeline in operation in 2013, so instead of a lengthy battle with the National Park Service, it plotted out the seven-mile detour, which cuts through lush forest and at least 11 private properties in Pike County.

"This avoidable environmentally destructive alternative, proposed by (Tennessee), derives from"»Superintendent John Donahue's insistence that the pre-existing easement cannot be used to install a new gas pipeline," commissioners say in their letter.

The letter goes on:

The Pike County Board of Commissioners, in reviewing the easement language that states that the easement is intended for "the purpose of constructing, operating, maintaining, repairing, altering, replacing, removing or changing the size of the pipe line for the transportation of natural gas," must take exception to the DWGNRA Superintendent's position. The commissioners feel that the existing easement can be used to construct a new gas pipeline. The commissioners further believe that as long as the work remains within the bounds of the existing easement it would be a ministerial matter, not requiring an "Act of Congress," as stated by the superintendent.

Commissioners are requesting a meeting with Reidenbach and Donahue to work out a solution.

Information must be submitted to FERC by June 27 that shows why FERC's decision to allow the loop is wrong, or that an issue was not properly addressed.

If the submitted information is compelling, FERC could hold a rehearing on the route. If not, the decision stands and Tennessee can get started on the project.

Commissioners will take public comments and discuss the matter at their regular meeting, today at 9 a.m. in the county administration building in Milford.